Abstract: The Hydro H100 heatsink ships fully assembled, filled with a propylene glycol based coolant and plumbed. The waterblock is connected by 24cm of flexible FEP tubing to the heat exchanger which measures about 274x120x25mm in size. Two 120mm fans are included, these operate at 2600-1300RPM and create a fair bit of noise at full tilt.

Corsair's Hydro H100 is a no fuss, self contained
CPU liquid cooling solution for use on Intel socket LGA2011/1366/1155/1156/775
and AMD socket AM3/AM2/FM1 processors. The system consists of two parts; a
12v DC pump head with skived copper waterblock and a large
aluminum liquid-to-air heat exchanger.

The Hydro H100
heatsink ships fully assembled, filled with a propylene glycol
based coolant and plumbed. The waterblock is connected by 24cm of flexible
FEP tubing to the heat exchanger which measures about 274x120x25mm
in size. Two 120mm fans are included, these operate at 2600-1300RPM
and create a fair bit of noise at full tilt. Retail price for the Corsair
Hydro H100 thermal solution is pegged at $119 USD/CDN. Just keep in mind the Hydro
H100 requires
a PC case with two side-by-side 120mm rear
fan holes.

If you stop by Frostytech often you'll no doubt recognize that Corsair's Hydro H100 liquid cooling system is
essentially identical to the Hydro H80 unit Frostytech tested
previously.
The only difference between the two is
the size of liquid-to-air heat exchanger and quantity of fans the pump
head can manage. Where the Hydro H80 used a roughly 120mm square by 45mm
thick heat exchanger, the Hydro H100 has a ~240x120mm rectangular, 25mm thick
unit. Both watercooling systems come with two 120mm fans, the Hydro
H80 has them positioned inline while the Hydro H100 has the
fans set side-by-side.

Whether you choose the Hydro H100 or H80 basically comes
down to how many 120mm rear fan ports your PC case has. If there's room for two
120mm rear exhaust fans in that full tower chassis, the Hydro H100 should fit.

The majority of self-contained liquid cooling systems on the market right now
are manufactured by three companies; Coolit Systems, Asetek and AVC. The Corsair
Hydro H100 is made by CoolIT Systems out of Calgary, Canada.

The Water Block

The Pump Head / Water Block is a 68x68x39mm box that mounts on the
processor. An illuminated button up to gives several steps of fan speed control. According to
the specs, the pump operates at 2100RPM with a flow rate of 2L/min.
Pump head pressure is pegged at 112cm H2O and the motor is rated fro 50K hrs MTBF. The pump is
very quiet in operation.

Inside
Corsair's Hydro H100 waterblock is a bit of circuitry for the pump motor, four
fan power connections, the Corsair LINK connection, a thermistor, some LED
lights and a thin micro-skived copper water block.

The two FEP hoses that come off the Hydro H100 waterblock are 9.5mm (O.D.)
and connect with swivel joints. The swivels make it a lot easier to get the
semi-ridged hoses pointed in the right general direction.

Swivel pipe
connections

CPU-to-Liquid Heat Exchanger

Let's examine the working end of the Hydro
H100's pump head/waterblock by removing the eight screws that hold the
copper base plate down. Inside we find brass thread inserts (good), a small
kapton wrapped thermistor (at upper left), a channel for the o-ring
(not present), a soft white silicone gasket and a very small volume of
coolant. Taking the top of the pump head/waterblock off reveals mostly
empty space... the few millilitres of coolant you see is all the
fluid reservoir there is.

Inside the
waterblock/pump head

The copper base plate is ~2mm thick and incorporates a small
micro-skived copper fin patch to increase the surface area in contact with
coolant.

CPU-to-liquid
heat exchanger

The liquid impinges this small but dense section of copper fins along a center
line (marked in blue, below), then travels between the fins outward to troughs that collect the
warmed coolant before it's pumped on to the liquid-to-air heat exchanger. The skived
fin area measures ~30x30x5mm in size.

Resting on top of the skived copper fins is a soft
white silicone pad with a narrow slot down the middle that directs fluid flow.
This gasket forces the liquid to flow in between the ~5mm tall skived copper
fins as the tops of the fins are flush to the silicone. The high degree
of copper surface area in contact with coolant makes the Hydro H100 efficient.

The O-ring is not shown in the above
image.

The caveat to this and
every other water cooling solution is of course, there's no
capacity for conduction cooling if the coolant stops. Stop the coolant flow for
whatever reason and CPU temps increase rapidly, dramatically. Watercooling also does
nothing to cool adjacent motherboard VRM or memory modules. You may need to
consider adding a fan if your board has a great many passive heatsinks around
the CPU socket.

Next up, Frostytech outlines a few of the problems we
encountered with this self-contained liquid cooling solution. First though, a
look at the heat exchanger and special tubing it uses....